Controversial, highly polluting projects that had been slated for middle-class areas may be relocated to "poorer, less politically savvy towns and villages elsewhere in the country," Alex Wang, an assistant law professor at UCLA and an expert on Chinese environmental law, told Foreign Policy.

"The truth is we don't really know how well these so-called NIMBY protests work," Wang said. "In most of the publicized cases they do seem to block the objectionable project."